Consumers often hire service providers to perform tasks. For example, a consumer might hire a plumber to fix a leaking faucet or a general contractor to construct and install kitchen cabinets. In general, a service provider is any person, company, organization, or other entity that offers services to consumers. A service provider may provide only services, or provide services in conjunction with goods, such as a contractor that installs cabinets or a plumber that replaces pipes. A consumer may refer to any entity that requests a service from a service provider, including individual users, companies, organizations and government agencies.
Previously, consumers searching for service providers have utilized telephone directories, lists of recommended businesses from professional organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce or the Better Business Bureau, or word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, family, colleagues, and business associates. More recently, online versions of these types of directories have become available.
Three broad categories of online local search have emerged to date. The first major category of online local search is the online directory, which are web sites or electronic equivalents of telephone directories and other types of business directories. These online directories typically include features such as searching or browsing by key words or categories. Electronic directories are most useful when consumers already have a business category or business name in mind.
The second major category of online local search is rating and review web sites, which are analogous to lists of recommended businesses and word-of-mouth recommendations. These web sites provide editor-generated or user-generated ratings and reviews of businesses, which act as a form of decision support for consumers who generally do not have first-hand familiarity with the business but want to gauge the quality of their services to determine if they want to become a consumer.
The third major category of online local search is lead generation sites. These sites accept requests for services from consumers and broker them out to potential service providers. The service providers must then contact the interested consumers directly to attempt to win their business.
These systems fail to meet numerous consumer needs. For example, consumers often do not know the proper name of the service category or the occupation of the person needed to complete a given task. In these cases, the local search options available today provide little value because the consumer lacks the knowledge required to perform an effective search. Additionally, many consumers have specific time and/or location requirements for services. These consumers typically must generate a list of potential service providers and then contact each one of them individually to determine their availability. Also, consumers often struggle to decide which service provider to choose when faced with many possibilities, but online ratings and reviews left by other consumers suffer from a high number of false or biased ratings. Further, consumers do not have a reliable way of knowing what to expect in terms of pricing for services, nor how specific details relating to a requested service will likely effect the ultimate price of the service.